


you won't be by yourself

by TheNightbloodSolution



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Retelling, im horrible at tagging but i had this idea ages ago and got inspiration for it last night
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-08-27 08:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16699396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNightbloodSolution/pseuds/TheNightbloodSolution
Summary: He tells her he’s a monster.She tells him she needs him.He does not listen.He just leaves.Or a retelling of seasons one, two, and three if Bellamy had left during Day Trip and Bellamy and Clarke reunite once Clarke leaves Camp Jaha after the irradiation of Mount Weather.





	1. Clarke

**Author's Note:**

> I got inspiration for this on a plane last night based on an idea I had months ago and then wrote the first two hundred words in the Notes App before my phone ran out of battery. It's angstier than I planned so... sorry?
> 
> Also note that this was not proofread by literally anyone so I guarantee there are typos and grammatical errors in it.

It goes like this: she’s seventeen and eleven months, and in one month, she will die.

It goes like this: she’s seventeen and eleven months, and she’s going to Earth.

It goes like this: she’s seventeen and eleven months, and the dropship metal clangs around her, rusty with disuse, unprepared for such a journey to the ground with one hundred delinquents.

It goes like this.

The Earth is green and fertile all around her; she wants nothing more than to run her hands along the tallest blades of grass and bask in the glow of the sun as she lies in a field of flowers. She wants nothing more and yet, she can’t. She dutifully grips her map, pointing her toward a mountain- toward safety, stability.

She is followed by a boy with floppy hair and a goofy smile who teases her with a grin and a nickname, an outspoken girl who’s been trapped so long, all she knows how to do is be free, and a pair of boys with sparkling eyes who carry mischief in their grins.

She is notably not followed by the boy who used to share her every, her every secret. (Not anymore.) She is not followed by the angry boy who picked a fight the minute his crusty, brown boots hit the soil. And she is not followed by the boy- no, the man with the gun in his waistband and the razor sharp tongue that could incite masses in mere minutes.

Earth is beautiful. Earth is plants and flowers and trees and green, so much green. Earth is butterflies that glow bright blue and flowers that sparkle a light pink shade.

Earth is deadly. Earth is a deer with two heads and razor blade teeth. Something lurks in the crystal waters on Earth, something inhuman, ready to attack at the slightest provocation. Something hits the boy with the goggles square in the chest with a long, pointy spear and pinpoint accuracy. Something disturbingly human.

She is not alone. They are not alone.

Fear runs rampant in camp, only matched by sheer enthusiasm. Whooping calls of teenagers who have freedom they were never granted in the sky. They are scared, but not scared enough to care.

For every survival, there is a loss.

The boy with the goggles survives and she chokes out a sob. She tells him she couldn’t handle him dying, and he says he’ll try not to die the next day either. But the boy who took the blame for her mother, the boy with the kindest soul she’d ever known, he is taken just as quickly. The blood-stained boy survives his hanging, but the twelve year-old murderer dives off a rocky cliff right before her very eyes that same day.

She knows she is screaming, she knows tears are streaming down her face but it’s almost like it’s not her at all. She has never experienced so much loss, not so fast. It’s too much to take. This could have been stopped. With rules. They need rules.

That’s how she comes to lead with the man with the dark, unruly curls, the one who seems to only care about himself and his sister, and yet, the delinquents seem to hang on his every word. For now, they make the rules.

As quickly as she finds comfort and trust in the Spacewalker, it’s ripped away, like a bandaid she didn’t know she was wearing. She had wounds, and they weren’t healing, but having him was like having something the dull the pain. But he had someone else all along, the girl with stars in her eyes who crashed through a galaxy. For _him_. He was this girl’s life. For her, he was only a bandaid. And she could learn to live without a bandaid, even if it did leave her wounds gushing and exposed.

She doesn’t care about him, not like the stargirl does. She doesn’t care about him at all, she tells herself. But then he’s on the table in front of her, and her heart is pounding at a cadence that can only be described as unnatural. She has to save him. Her mother is alive, though many from the sky are not anymore, and she is talked through the procedure. It would work, if not for the poison.

Bloody. Rough. Slow. _Torturous_. That’s how her coleader tries to extract the information, anything they can get from the inked man. He may not be a preacher for chaos anymore, but her coleader has lost none of his fire. He burns and crackles as he presses the knife into the flesh of the man who took his sister, his life, his _responsibility_. He tells her to leave at some point, but she will not. He is not doing anything she does not condone of. The ends justify the means. They have to.

In the end, it’s the girl who played with the butterflies (though she barely resembles that girl at all anymore, she is harder, she no longer aches for freedom, she has it, and it is scary) who saves the boy.

The ends justify the means to some, like the stargirl, who finds it all worth the sacrifice. To others, it is the catalyst in pushing away people; the butterfly girl will no longer look at her brother in the eye.

It goes like this: two coleaders go on a day trip, where they find guns, and he looks more excited than she’s ever seen him, smile contorting his face into a kind of beautiful she’d never seen before.

It goes like this: two coleaders are attacked, viciously, by a boy just acting on orders.

It goes like this: one coleader kills the boy.

It goes like this.

She leans against the tree, rough bark digging into her already sensitive skin. He is covered in blood, but it’s not his own. His eyes tell of hauntings much deeper than what just happened.

He tells her he’s a monster.

She tells him she needs him.

He asks her to come with. He’s packed much more than he needs for a day trip, which she already feared.

She cannot do this alone. She tells him.

He does not listen.

He just leaves.

She arrives back at camp with guns toted over her shoulder, as many as she could carry. Alone. For that’s what she is now.

She keeps the boy with beanie close, like he told her to, and he helps, but it’s not the same. The boy with the beanie cannot rouse crowds with a single speech. He cannot convince the youngest they are protected, while at the same time convincing the oldest they still have their freedom, that they can still do whatever the hell they want. (And her new coleader agrees with her far too much.)

Earth is beautiful. Earth is dark, eerily gorgeous woods that smell of pine and dirt. Earth is freshly caught boar that melts in the mouths of a hundred teenagers. Earth is laughter and friendship made in a group that has become so much more the dregs of a floating society.

Earth is deadly. Earth is grounders with deadly bows and poisoned arrows shooting during Unity Day. Earth is war and bombs and blown-up bridges.

Earth is a plan, a deadly plan, to burn hundreds of bodies alive ‘til their flesh is melted off the bone.

And as she calls out for the boy with beanie, along with the boy who has carries a part of her heart in his pocket, she knows Earth is something else too. The lever is cold and unassuming in her hand. On its own, it is just a lever. It operates a door, but in her palm it is so much more. It is a weapon. It is a choice. When she tugs down, she knows that Earth is sacrifice, too.

* * *

 

She wakes up in a box of white. The wall is smooth beneath her skin and the air smells sterile, like the hospital back on the Ark but amplified. Her mind races with possibilities; is she in heaven? Hell? Purgatory? She remembers the bodies, burned to the bone, scattered around the dropship like a mass grave, and with that, she rules out heaven. The camera in her cell tips her off that her entrapment in this room of white is much more sinister. A prison for the living.

The mountain reconnects her with familiar faces. A boy lost is now found biting into chocolate cake. Lost smiles are recovered on young faces. It is a reprieve from war. It is safety and warmth and comfort. It is far too easy.

The clothes cling to her unnaturally, everything is covered in a thin layer of dust. The people speak a bit too methodically, afraid to let something slip. A bullet wound turns into an arrow. Nothing in the mountain is as it seems.

At the least, she can draw here. The pen provided to her is an escape in more ways than one. She uses it to track the mountain, draw its floor plan, and devise a way out. But it also helps her to escape her mind. She draws like she used to when she was trapped in that little grey cell. She draws trees and forests and flowers and butterflies. She draws lost people in body parts. A smile that used to sit on her father’s lips. The eyes of the girl who could make a bomb with her bare hands. The matching smirks of a girl and her brother. She draws and draws until her hand cramps, and then she draws some more.

She draws the grounder princess, too, until she doesn’t have to draw it because she’s face to face with the warrior herself. And that warrior is trapped in a cage like a rogue animal, and just as fierce.

Blood stains coat the floor and hundreds of gaunt grounders stare at her, the other. She got crisp linens while they got fabric scraps. She ate cake while they were trapped in cages and probed with needles.

The grounder princess and the princess of the Ark do many insane things that day. They hide from reapers. They separate. They reunite. They run. And in a gamble for their life, they are left with one choice. They jump.

For every survival, there is a loss. The princess of the Ark returns to her people, muddied and grime-ridden, but the grounder princess goes out with a bullet to the head. Her mother survived, but the Chancellor is gone. A boy survives in physicality, but loses his mind over lost love.

This boy has hands that once crafted necklaces. Now they pull triggers.

She isn’t fast enough to save him from himself.

She isn’t fast enough the day he shoots the village, or the day when the Commander claims him for retribution.

Sticky, thick blood coats her hands. _She scrubs_. The knife sunk straight through skin. _She scrubs_. He loved her. _She scrubs_. He’s dead.

The mountain must be liberated. If it is not, all she did was for nothing.

She must be hard like the Commander, she must do whatever it takes. She must send her coleader into a deadly trap. She must let a bomb drop on a city of innocents. She must do what she must do. For her people. The ends justify the means. Don’t they?

A kiss from the Commander doesn’t feel like the start of something new. Her lips feel rough, not soft like the boy she used to kiss. The Commander is strong and brave and everything she wants to be, but kissing her now does not spark anything in her heart. She is too numb to feel anything like that now, after what she’s seen, after what she’s done.

As numb as her heart seems to be, it breaks just a bit more when she is abandoned outside the mountain, the grounder army flown away as if it had never stood strong with her at all.

She should feel relief when she sees her coleader, the boy with beanie (though he wears the beanie no longer- a hat is just another casualty of a never-ending fight on Earth), that he’s alive despite the trap she sent him to, but all she feels is dread because people, _her people_ , are still trapped.

She has to save them.

In the end, it is not her decision alone, for no decision that big can rest on one person’s shoulders. It is her. It is the boy whose fast fingers program the lever. It is her coleader, who has hardened in this mountain, been through things he will not admit to anyone. It is the three of them together. It is another level, cold and unassuming in her hands.

Once again, Earth is sacrifice.

When that lever is pulled, her heart, held together only by threads, finally shatters.

Months ago, she was just a girl locked up because she knew a secret. Now, she was so much worse.

The names come rushing back to her.

A man who believed in the good of a society. _Her father_. A boy who only ever wanted to protect her. _Wells_. A girl who just wanted to do more than live in fear. _Charlotte_. A warrior who could have helped her get to peace. _Anya_. A boy who loved her. _Finn_. A rebel in the form of a teenage girl. _Maya_.

All gone.

It goes like this: two coleaders stand outside a camp, the weight of what they’ve done hanging around them.

It goes like this: one coleader asks the other to stay – he can’t lead alone, he’s never done that before. He needs her. She doesn’t listen.

It goes like this: one coleader walks away.

It goes like this.

No one follows her this time. She is not searching, or leading, or rallying troops. Now, she is simply existing.

She kills panthers and trades with locals, hikes mountains and swims in lakes. She dyes her hair with berries and covers herself in furs. She tries to be someone else.

She may not be followed, but she is hunted. She is Wanheda now. The Commander of Death. Her Trigedasleng is slow and choppy at best, but she knows enough to tell that people are looking for the girl who slayed the mountain. They want her power. She only wishes she could give it to them; she no longer wants the power of death in her feeble hands.

The girl she visits often trades more with her than just panther meat. They trade only glances at first, slow and appraising, then approving. Then they trade panther meat for furs and skins in return. Gathered medicinal herbs for a tarp. More game for a spear. Soon they trade kisses, too, but that’s all they are. Kisses. Her heart is still too broken to let another in, but she can at least revel in heat of another person for a few nights, if only to avoid feeling numb.

For all the people that hunt her, the one who finally catches her is a banished Ice Prince. He grapples with her in the water and the dye washes quickly out of her hair, staining the lake the red like blood. Suddenly, the water feels sticky and thick just as it did on her hands when she plunged the knife into-

She can’t breathe. And not just because the prince is placing a gag in her mouth.

He drags her to a cave nearby and ties her up. The water _drip, drip, drips_ from the mouth of the cave in a steady rhythm. The rocks around her are jagged and foreboding, but not serrated enough to cut through her ties (though she tries, over and over and over).

She doesn’t know where she’ll be taken, the Ice Prince doesn’t say. Maybe to the dangerous Ice Nation, which she has only heard of through stories. Maybe to the Commander, who she’s certain at this point must want her head. Maybe he’ll just kill her himself to try and take her power and tying her up is all just pretense.

A shadow of a man emerges at the mouth of the cave, but it’s smaller than that of the Ice Prince.

Boots come into view first, crusty, worn things. _Ark-issued_. Then leather pants and a vest of furs, not unlike the ones she’s gotten at trading posts before.

And then he leans down, and his face is only inches from hers. Brown eyes, curly hair, longer than she remembers it, the patchy beginnings of a beard that isn’t growing in right. And freckles.

He reaches for her gag and tugs it downward.

“Clarke?”

She takes a sharp gulp of the stale cave air and exhales loudly.

“Bellamy.”

 

 

 


	2. Bellamy

It goes like this: he’s twenty-three and like Augustus, he has a sister.

It goes like this: he’s twenty-three and she’s his sister, his responsibility.

It goes like this: he’s twenty-three and he fails her, the makeshift mask obscuring her eyes not enough to hide her from the law.

It goes like this.

The Ark is stuffy and damp, and crueler than he’s ever known it to be in the months following her arrest. He cleans nearly every inch of every station, knows the fit of a mop in his hand by heart, which is why after all those months, when the heavy weight of metal is thrust back into his palm, he barely knows how to hold it.

Something about guns must be instinctual, though, because he has no trouble turning it on the man who handed it to him. A man who only responds with a quirked brow, as if challenging him to do it. (He knows he won’t). He comes with a deal: a shot for a reunion, a bullet for freedom.

It isn’t really a choice at all, in the end.

The gun so heavy in his hands before suddenly weighs nothing at all. It calls to him, a silent message:

_Earth, Bellamy. You get to go to Earth._

The gunshot rings out, echoing off the tin walls, the sound lodging itself in his brain.

He just took his first life. _The shot rings._ He’s going to see his sister again. _The shot rings._ Does he even deserve to? _The shot rings._

It rings and rings and rings until a voice cuts through, stopping the sound.

“Stop! The air could be toxic.”

Her voice is low. Her hair is tied back, but glowing bright blonde. And her eyes. Her eyes are icy fire, challenging him at the first glance.

That’s what she’s here for, it turns out. Challenging him.

He is all bravado on the ground. With quick recruitment, he grabs the boy who is little more than a gasoline fire, all rage and despair and eyes filled with cruelty. Maybe it’s a case of lost soul recognizes lost soul. Maybe it’s just that he needs a lackey. Either way, he has one now.

His guard only drops for his sister, who he hugs at every turn now that he has her back. She is light and everything good, where he is dark. And he’ll glad keep swallowing darkness to protect her.

His guard is up highest for her, the bright-haired girl, the challenger. She tugs her arm away from him when he eyes her wristband, steals the boar from under his very nose with Spacewalker, using his own words against him. He almost drops her. He won’t drop her.

Earth is beautiful. Earth is the smell of pine as he hunts. Earth is the jovial laugh of children who never had this freedom before. Earth is green, too. So much green.

Earth is deadly. Earth is the prince of the Ark being reduced to a severed finger. Earth is the condemning of an innocent boy for murder. Earth is a little girl jumping over a cliff, and just for a second her hair looks darker and he swears she has his sister’s eyes as she jumps over the edge.

Maybe they do need rules, after all.

And her, with her steely composure and upright head, she is fit to make them. She says they’ll make them together. She doesn’t know what he really is: a fraud.

But the Ark still looms, the only place left in the Universe that can haunt him with his sins. If the Ark doesn’t exist, maybe all he did there can be forgotten. That’s what he thinks when he tosses the radio (but leaves the sleeping girl in tact).

Of course, his actions catch up to him. They always do.

In the woods, surrounded by tall trees and rough bark, his faux confidence finally wavers. Not when Spacewalker shoves him. Not when the new girl puts a knife to his throat. But when _she_ says the words he longs to hear.

“You’re not a murderer.”

And for twelve hours, he’s not. He always did what he had to protect his sister. _That’s_ who he is.

For twelve glorious hours, he could be the good guy.

And then the strangest shooting stars start falling through the sky like fireworks, but not in celebration. Now, he is a murderer.

He can’t seem to care when his sister goes missing. She is all that matters. For if she’s not there, everything he does, everything he is, is nothing. His sister, his responsibility.

Every action has a reaction. His sister escapes unscathed; Spacewalker is stabbed. The grounder bleeds under his calloused hands; his sister will no longer look at him. He tells the princess she doesn’t need to stay as his blade slices through the grounder’s skin; she won’t leave. The star girl is desperate; the grounder is electrocuted.

As much blood is shed, it is not the grounder’s blood that saves Spacewalker, it is his sister’s spilled blood that makes the grounder point out the antidote.

His sister knew everything about him already. She knew how he used to read her to sleep. She knew that nightmares plagued him from his youth. She knew he shot the Chancellor. She knew he was a murderer. And through it all, she was still his sister, but this is the final straw. She won’t even look his way anymore.

She doesn’t need him anymore.

So, when the princess traipses up to him with a cocked hip and a smug expression, demanding the presence of someone she hates, he can’t deny her. Why would he? This is his chance for a fresh start.

His sister doesn’t need him.

The camp doesn’t need him, so long as they have their blue-eyed leader.

No one needs him.

It goes like this: two coleaders are attacked, viciously, by a boy just acting on orders.

It goes like this: one coleader kills the boy.

It goes like this.

He can’t even feel the bark digging into his skin, rough and unrelenting, not when the blood of a boy is coating his hands. Every time he looks at her and then back to his own his hands, they seem to get a little bit redder. The blood is piling up.

Earth is beautiful. Earth is his sister’s smile as butterflies swarm around her. Earth is the wind blowing through his hair as his gun lies secure and reassuring against his hip. Earth is the sun setting on the camp they’ve built. The life they’ve built.

He is deadly. He shot the chancellor. He told a girl a bedtime story and then she slayed a prince. He cut the rope, left a boy dangling feet off the ground. He threw a radio away, and hundreds of lives along with it. And now he killed a boy just like himself. A boy just acting on orders, the same way he did on the Ark. He may as well have shoved a bullet in his own neck, they were so similar.

He’s a monster.

Whispered reassurances come from next to him, but they fall on deaf ears. This is not a day trip, it never was.

She begs him to stay.

He leaves.

His rations only last him a week, and the shots from his gun ring out too loud when he tries to kill his dinner. He’s in grounder territory now, days’ trek away from the dropship. He camps in the woods, against trees and next to bushes. He has no tent, just his sleeping bag and his pack for a pillow.

The first grounder he sees sends him running. She stands in his forest, plucking flowers from the ground, blonde hair hanging loose around her shoulders, strands resting against the furs she wears.

The crunch of a twig under his foot sends her eyes upward, colliding with his, and he runs. Sprints, really. She doesn’t look armed, but he can hear her footsteps charging after him. His breath is heavy in the air and he feels his lungs pound and for the first time in days, he can’t think. He can’t think about his sister or the kids he left behind or the people he’s murdered. All he can do is run. It’s exhilarating. It’s free.

Until a root snags his foot and suddenly, he’s falling, collapsing on the ground as a sharp pain runs up his leg. The footsteps get louder. He has to stand, but he can’t.

He tries to reach for his gun, but the girl gets there first, pinning him to the ground.

He expects to find malice in her eyes, or to feel the sting of a knife to his throat, but when he looks at her, her brow is simply furrowed like she can’t make sense of the sight before her.

When she speaks in English, he nearly gasps. She doesn’t want to hurt him, she says. She’s unarmed. She feels him wince as she shifts against his leg and frowns, and then he’s being lifted and his large frame rests against her.

She drags him back to her hut, a small little shack with knick-knacks all around. She rambles that this is her shop, she owns it with her father. He doesn’t get her life story, but she talks about everything and nothing at all as he stays quiet and she bandages his leg.

He starts learning the language of the grounders with her as he heals. She gives him furs and musses with his hair to make his pass as one of them. From afar, he might pass as one of them, but up close, he’s still a sky boy.

He goes out on his own again when her father comes back from his trip, but every so often he’ll go back to her hut with a kill of his and trades with her. She gives him deals that are far too generous and teaches him more of her tongue.

With a start, he realizes he may have made his first ever friend. Before her, he only had his sister and his mother, both family. She was different, smiled when he came in the shop and laughed at his bad attitude. Unlike the delinquents, she didn’t look up to him, revere him or fear him, and she didn’t want to be him. She was just his friend.

When he realizes it, that’s when he stops going to the shop. He has no need for trades anyway. He can kill his own food, owns all the furs he could possibly need, and his use of the native tongue is passable, at least.

At least, he thinks it is, until the cave he’s camping in is attacked. The man is shorter than him, probably slightly younger, too, with jet black clinging to his dirt-covered forehead. His attacker pushes a knife to his throat and snarls at him in Trigedasleng. He responds, but not convincingly enough as the attacker withdraws the knife and stares at him curiously.

_Sky person_ , he accuses.

The knife doesn’t leave his hand, but the questions do start. Why isn’t he with the other sky people? Why is he posing as one of them? Where did he get his resources?

And for the first time, he has to grit out who he is. What he’s done. Why he left. Who he is: an outcast. He doesn’t belong with the sky people anymore, but he will never be a grounder either. He'll never pass as one of them, not really.

That’s when the strangest thing happens. The knife is lowered, and his sleeve is rolled up, showing the man’s mutated arm. _Frikdreina_ , he calls himself. An outcast.

It’s strange what two loners can have in common. The way they hunt, the places they sleep, the way they roam around. It’s only natural to do it together, to be a unit.

At night, he thinks of his sister. His mother. A princess with golden hair. A smiling boy in goggles. He thinks of them together, laughing around a fire. Then, he thinks of himself, alone. No one wants to be alone, really.

That’s how two loners come together as one; they do it to avoid being alone.

They eat together. They hunt together. Travel together.

At night, they sleep together. The shorter boys arms wrap around his torso, and sometimes, he feels safe. Other nights, their lips meet as the fire crackles by their bags.

He learns how hunt with a spear, then teaches how to shoot a gun. They are give and take with their actions, their words, and their touches.

With him, it’s the closest he’s been to moving on. He doesn’t think about what he’s left behind when he’s tangled up in the other boy’s arms. He doesn’t dream of his sister’s smile as much, or his mother’s voice.

He isn’t happy, but he isn’t lost in his head either.

And then the universe decides karma is in order.

He left everyone behind, it’s only fair that this time, he isn’t the one who leaves.

He wakes up one morning to an empty cave. His pack is gone, his gun too, and his old, Ark issue clothes. The meat they caught yesterday is eaten, other than a few fatty pieces. All he has left are the clothes on his back, his sleeping bag, and a hand-crafted spear.

It’s this cave of empty memories where he chooses to stay and build a home for himself. The man never comes back, but he doesn’t expect him to. He’s still no longer lost in his head, now he’s just numb.

It turns out, numb is worse. Some days he doesn’t leave his bed. Some days all he feels are the rocks beneath him shifting as he turns in his sleeping bag. Some days he isn’t sure he can remember the right color for his sister’s eyes.

That’s what snaps him out of it, his sister.

He starts going back to the shop, trading with the blonde girl, though he doesn’t need to. He starts talking to her again. She tells him about the new sky people that landed in an even bigger ship, and he knows he has to go see it for himself.

The Ark is on the ground.

All it is is an excuse, though. In reality, he has to see his sister, make sure she’s safe. The clothes on his back are that of a grounder, and Trigadesleng words roll off his tongue smoothly as if he was born in these woods, but none of that can take away who he truly is: a brother.

The sign outside the Ark commemorates the Chancellor, but he just needs to get close enough to peer in. He still can’t go back; he isn’t pardoned, but he needs to see her. Know she’s okay.

He doesn’t believe in fate, or destiny, but for a second, he forgets all that because he sees her. Standing in the gateway of the camp, dressed head to toe in dark clothing and grounder makeup smeared by her eyes. _His sister_. (Maybe they were connected after all, both playing the part of a grounder.)

He’s so caught on her, it takes him a minute to register the actual grounder with his arm around her shoulder, the same one he chained up by the wrists.

Visions flash in his head. Blood and chains, his sister’s screams. And then, the way his sister looked at him. Ice in her green eyes (green… her eyes were green, and he remembered them perfectly now), lips downturned in a snarl, and realization all over her face, like she finally understood just who he was. And she’d never forgive him for it.

The contrast to the scene before him was violent. His sister painted in grounder warpaint, but softer than she had ever been with him. A laugh bubbling from her throat and joy in her eyes as she tugged her grounder closer.

His sister wasn’t just okay, she was thriving. Without him.

Earth is still beautiful. The smile is back upon is his sister’s face, and he’s never felt so bittersweet.

For he is still deadly and he can’t risk ruining her happiness.

He almost stays, almost traipses right through the gates just to see her smile up close and feel her in his arms, but instead he turns on his heel and heads back to his cave. He doesn’t stick around to see the blonde step out from behind the gate and confer with his sister, doesn’t see the smiles fall from their faces as they gravely talk about their friends trapped in a mountain. He just leaves.

As he starts frequenting the shop again, the blonde – his _friend_ , starts to explain the world he was dropped into. Twelve clans, one commander, one flame. The dangerous mountain men.

She’s his source of new information. She’s the one who tells him the mountain was freed, all the mountain men killed by a fearless sky girl. He wonders who, but in his head, all he can picture is his sister in her fierce war paint. She’s also the one who tells him, a few months later of Wanheda, the sky girl now gone rogue. No one knows where she is, not the sky people, nor the grounders, but everyone is looking.

_Wanheda came by,_ she tells him one day, casual as ever.

He’s on her with questions in a second. What did she act like? Why was she here? Where did she go?

She points him in the right direction and he’s gone.

He follows tracks in the shallow mud to a cave, not unlike the one he stays in. Two sets of prints, big and small, the smaller set clearly boot prints, just like the ones he’s wearing. Ark-issued, the one piece of clothing he couldn’t let go.

He sprints along the trail, heart beat pounding in his ears as he approaches the dark cavern. Then, he slows and hides. Eventually, a man exits, the scars marking his face branding him as Azgeda.

He makes his move, sneaking into the cave, adrenaline coursing through his veins.

_Wanheda_ , he whispers softly. _Octavia_ , his brain whispers back.

Boots come into view first, crusty, worn things.  _Ark-issued_. 

But when the body comes into view, the hair is the wrong color, blonde tinged with strands of washed-out pink. The eyes are too blue.

Wanheda, the Commander of Death, is a princess.

And then he leans down, and his face is only inches from hers. Blue eyes pop against dirt-stained skin, and her hair is matted with mud, making it darker than he remembers it.

He reaches for her gag and tugs it downward.

“Clarke?”

It's only one syllable, but he can hear his own voice waver as he says it.

“Bellamy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, I got kind of stalled with what to do with Bellamy once he left camp.

**Author's Note:**

> Right now the plan for this is that it'll be three chapters. This first one was Clarke's. Next chapter will be Bellamy's side of the story, which will go noticably more off course from canon since in this story he completely abandoned camp after Day Trip. The final chapter will be the story of what happens with Bellamy and Clarke picking up after the end of this chapter, so basically a completely new version of season three.
> 
> Check me out on [tumblr](http://clarkgriffon.tumblr.com) if you want to I guess?


End file.
